Heretofore, numerous methods and apparatuses have been developed for production of mechanical and electrical energy, however difficulties and limitations are inherent in all of them. For example, electrical power plants utilizing high priced fossil fuel to generate electricity are emitting greenhouse gases that scientists claim to be the greatest contributor to the global warming problem. It is predicted that this will have a significant negative impact on our environment within the next 50 years.
Plants utilizing dams/water reservoirs, to produce hydroelectricity, also will impact our environment due to the necessity to flood surrounding inhabited land resources. In addition, water resources are depleted to suffice electrical demands.
The accidents in Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union, and 3 Mile Island, in the United States, have proven Nuclear power through history to be very unhealthy and potentially fatal to people within surrounding areas. An effective means of disposing nuclear waste has not been established. Nuclear power, still consumes uranium, and has limited capacity due to the necessity to operate at lower pressures for safety reasons.
Chlorofluorohydrocarbon (CFC) emissions from existing refrigeration and air conditioning systems have been depleting our Earth's ozone layer, which is believed to be the cause of many illnesses attributed to harmful radiation entering our atmosphere.
Further, growing problems associated with energy production and supplies that are continuing to decrease the health of our planet include negative effects as a result of the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the Earth's ozone layer, nuclear waste disposal, and the many other adverse effects, including loss of life and land, that are attributed to the fossil fuel industry (war, oil tanker spills, offshore drilling, land destruction as a result of coal mining, etc.) and land flooding from the building of dams. Economic problems also will continue to grow as consumable energy resources become more scarce and as a result of the cost of the necessary upgrading of old, power generation and grid systems in developed countries.
In addition, as China's and India's industrial development continues to grow at an accelerated pace power consumption and demand increases. Experts anticipate that China alone will soon consume more oil than the United States. Present estimates by experts are that our planet's oil resources will deplete within 32 years.
Fossil fuel burning, and many other presently known mechanical engines in use today also present problems for the defense Industry. One problem is that all of these engines release residual heat that is detectable by the infrared heat sensors.
Many other technologies have been developed to try to solve the problem of finding an environmentally friendly, safe, and economically efficient method to generate electricity, achieve energy consuming mechanical functions (i.e. for transportation, industrial manufacturing, etc.) and provide refrigeration, cooling, and air conditioning functions. The following is a list of some of those technologies and some of their associated benefits and liabilities:                (a) Bio Mass generation is another way to produce electricity than coal and oil burning power generation plants. But as fossil fuel plants do, bio mass generation also emits harmful gases into our atmosphere, again negatively impacting our environment.        (b) Wind turbine generation is probably the best existing technology implemented today but has limited capacity capabilities, requires considerable initial investments, utilizes considerable amount of land and it is not aesthetically pleasing to many. It is also dependent on weather conditions and geographical locations.        (c) Solar thermal and solar photovoltaic power generation is limited due to its dependency on weather conditions and availability of sunlight. Collector arrays again have to consume large surface areas of property to generate a reasonable amount of power. This is attributed to the fact that solar rays produces a limited amount of Btu's per sq. ft depending upon the time of day and geographical location. This also requires extra expense and maintenance costs attributed to the necessary installation of large thermal or chemical energy storage systems, that are typically coupled with them.        (d) Hydrogen Fuel Cells do not emit harmful gases into our atmosphere but other hazardous conditions exist due to the extremely explosive properties of hydrogen. Also unlike biomass, wind turbines, and solar, this alternative requires consumption of hydrogen and it is not economically efficient to completely modify our infrastructure to make our society dependent on hydrogen, as it is, dependent on fossil fuel today. Present technology requires costly energy consumption to liquefy the hydrogen.        (e) Several cryogenic energy systems utilizing an expansion engine have been proposed. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,116, a method and apparatus for converting thermal energy to mechanical energy is disclosed. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,515, a heat pump energy recovery method and method of curtailing power for driving a compressor in a heat pump is disclosed. However, both these technologies require mechanical motor driven compressor(s) and/or pump(s) that consume more energy than the system can produce in net shaft work output which requires an external power generation source for supplemental energy input, and the internal latent heat of the system is rejected to an external heat sink rendering it wasted energy. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,109 a condensing atmospheric engine is disclosed. The technology proposes to inject and/or extract air directly from the atmosphere into a specially designed vacuum chamber maintaining a deep vacuum created by a mechanical vacuum pump supplemented by an expansion engine. The air is isentropic ally expanded to stimulate a phase transformation of condensation to a solid state which is also assumed to supplement the vacuum process and provide a latent heat sink. In SAE Series # 981898 and # 972649 technical papers on the Quasi-Isothermal Expansion Engine and appurtenances that power the Cryocar LN2000 developed by the University of Washington, disclose an engine using liquid air and combustible fuel. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,681,609, a non-polluting motor, including cryogenic fluid as the motive means is disclosed. Significant problems and limitations accompany all such technology, For example, the Cryocar LN2000 extracts stored liquid nitrogen an open loop system which consists of an evaporator, superheater and an expansion engine to create shaft work coupled to propel and/or power the vehicle. The residual sensible and latent heat and all the nitrogen is wasted as it is exhausted to the atmosphere. Therefore, the liquid nitrogen is consumed and has to be replenished. In similarity to the hydrogen fuel cell technology, this system, as it is presently developed, is not economically efficient. Further, being that it requires completely modifying our infrastructure to make our society dependent on nitrogen, as opposed to the current dependency on fossil fuel today, its practicality is very limited. Further, such prior technology requires costly energy consumption, that can include fossil fuel, to liquefy the nitrogen.        
Accordingly, several objects and advantages of our the present cryogenic cogeneration system are:                (a) to provide a closed loop system that generates power/mechanical energy without emitting any harmful gasses to the atmosphere, while providing a heat sink for other applications, and does not require an additional heat sink.        (b) to provide an independent system with minimal/limited land use needed and no requirements for specific geographic locations and weather conditions.        (c) to provide a safe system that can operate with inert, non-explosive, non-poisonous gases.        (d) to provide a system that does not directly and/or indirectly consume and deplete scarce/non-renewable energy resources for its operation and will also provide the opportunity for society to be independent of consumable resources.        (e) to provide a natural convection, thermosiphonic iso/exothermal compression process in the vapor compression cycle requiring only free thermal energy input to achieve the necessary work. After the free thermal energy is converted to work, the residual sensible and latent heat energy and the refrigerant medium can be recycled as it is condensed from the vapor and/or gas state back into the liquid state, allowing energy conservation, and minimizing society's dependency on the existing expensive consumable energy infrastructure.        
Further objects and advantages are to provide the ability for almost any medium that contains thermal energy to provide the energy input to the system to produce net work output; to provide the conversion of thermal energy (heat) to mechanical and/or electrical energy; to provide an inexpensive, environmentally safe alternative form of transportation, with only renewable energy consumption. The method and apparatus can be applied to trucks, trains, ships, planes, and the like; to provide electricity; to provide environmental control systems, for example air conditioning, refrigeration, cryogenics, and the like. The present invention can be utilized in cryogenic applications for liquefaction of gases such as nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, methane, and the like; laboratory and semiconductor applications, and medical applications (such as cryonics, etc), which reduce the expensive costs of electricity consumption that is presently needed for existing systems. Still further applications include use in power plants, where such technology is scalable up to the largest multi-megawatt power generation plant that mankind can conceive and construct. Specific geographical locations, environmental hazards, fossil fuel and/or water consumptions are not necessary. All that is needed is air or other equivalent heat source(s). The present system may also be used to provide cogeneration for many industrial facilities and computer server farms have large quantities of waste heat that has been, in most cases, a liability to operations. With the subject technology, these liabilities can be turned into an asset while becoming a supplemental heat source to generate power. The disclosed technology can also partner with existing renewable energy projects such as solar, bio-mass, geo-thermal, etc., competitively increase their capacity to far exceed the capacities of existing fossil fuel power generation facilities.
As well as a mobile power source, (eliminating the need to carry and replenish fuel supplies), the subject technology can be combined with other new technologies recently conceived. For example, such technology creates an opportunity to enhance replace existing rotocraft technology by decreasing diameters of propellers/rotors and still lift the same amount of weight that the larger propellers/rotors lift today. Such technology may also be used to provide water distillation/purification, extraction and reserve storage.
With the cryogenic cogeneration system and thermal source cogeneration disclosed herein, including both method and apparatus, the environment is safe from emissions, hazardous waste, flooding of valuable property and no particular geographic location is necessary to implement it. This system consumes no water, no fuel, no storage, and no chemical treatment and is not dependant on weather conditions. It can also be utilized in water, land, and aerospace transportation systems.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of apparatus, methods, and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.